Dark Heart (26 page)

‘The Neherian nobility,’ breathed Noetos in reply. ‘All of them, I think. Claudo was telling the truth, strange as it seems to me.’

‘They’re staring at us.’ Duon’s voice quavered on the edge of fear.

‘Ignore them. Nosy lot.’

Noetos had not realised how far his voice carried.

‘Indeed, son of Demios, we are curious about you.’ The rich voice came from the man on the throne. ‘Why would we not be? Had your father been somewhat more politic, it would have been he—or you—sitting today atop this throne and this newborn empire.’

Noetos tried to breathe normally, but found himself gasping a series of shallow breaths. ‘Local politics never held much interest for my father,’ he said, addressing the room. ‘Nor me.’

His reward was a flash of anger across the regent’s face. ‘Local politics, as you describe it, has swallowed up your village and your country just as easily as it swallowed your family.’

‘Ah, my family.’ Just like that his breathing relaxed as anger allowed him to put any consequences aside. ‘What would a Neherian know of filial devotion?’

‘More than you might think,’ said the woman, in the most beautiful, stately contralto. She smiled, a small thing. ‘Nephew.’

She leaned back to assess the impact of her revelation.

Noetos’s mind went grey, then white.
What?
‘You claim me as a relative, woman? Who are you to me?’
Not my mother’s sister; she was no Neherian, and would be older and likely larger than this woman.
Frantic searching of a memory deliberately repressed.
My father had no sisters. Who then?

‘She is my wife, and new-crowned Empress of the Southern Empire,’ said the man. ‘And I, young Noetos, am your uncle. Your father’s younger brother. And, I am proud to say, his murderer, at least by proxy.’

‘Uncle Meranios? But he…you…were a loyal brother. You…I don’t understand.’ Suppressed laughter from the long table accompanied his discomfiture.

‘Why should you? Demios despaired of you, boy. According to him you never paid attention to your tutors. Had you, you would have learned enough of our “local politics” to know your father’s opposition to our patriotic expansionist policies could never be allowed to prevail. How many more generations were we going to wait before reclaiming Old Roudhos’s legacy? Do you know, your father threatened to go to the Undying Man himself with evidence of our plans? This, after initially being the ringleader of our movement?’

‘You seem surprised,’ Meranios’ wife continued. ‘But why? Are you shocked that the entire court knows of this? Your family history has been a secret from no one for the last decade or more. Well, from no one but you, obviously. We have come north from Aneheri to establish this city once again as the seat of our Summer Palace, the vanguard of our push to reclaim Roudhos from the Undying Man’s careless and gravely weakened grasp.’

‘So you ordered your brother and his family slain,’ Noetos said, his heart hammering. ‘Are you aware what was done to them? How they were killed?’

Now Noetos had been given time to adjust, he could make out the remnants of his uncle in this man’s face. The face was jowly, the hair had receded and the voice was thinner, but it was him.

‘Oh, yes,’ his uncle said. ‘All on the orders of the patriots. You see, his was not the only betrayal of our cause. There were others considering selling us to the
Maghdi Dasht
, and we had to provide an incentive for them to remain loyal. Avoiding the suffering and fate of Demios and his family is a good incentive, hmm?’

‘Rape?’ Noetos’s voice was leaden. ‘Ripped apart by wild dogs?
Being made to watch?
’

‘You’ll shock no one in this room,’ said his aunt. ‘We were the ones who made the decision. Everyone here knew about it and approved of every detail. A number of those looking on you now volunteered for the mission. That decision kept us alive and, more importantly, kept the cause alive. If you’d read your Comus you would know why it was necessary. But of course you didn’t. Let others do the work, as long as they kept the throne clean for your indolent backside to sit upon.’

‘So you believe you were right in what you did?’ Noetos ran his eyes across the assembled court, and read their assent in their eyes. ‘You all deserve to die.’

‘Fortunately, it is you who will die, nephew,’ said the man who sat the throne. The self-styled Emperor, Noetos supposed. The fool who, sooner or later, would be slain at the order of the Undying Man.

He plunged in, their criticism of his political acumen notwithstanding. ‘Where are the places set for the Undying Man and his
Maghdi Dasht
? I assume this is all done with his assent. Or,’ he affected surprise, ‘are you doing this without his knowledge? You are, aren’t you. Whatever death you subject me to tonight will be but a shadow of what he will engineer upon your bodies. What on earth are you thinking, Uncle?’

‘So many questions,’ said his aunt, ‘and all that is missing is the wit to understand the answers. Truly, we would have to have killed them anyway, traitor or no. Could you imagine being ruled by someone as indigent and, frankly, stupid as this?’

Their laughter swelled in his ears. They mocked him, yes, but they mocked his family also, and that hurt.

‘Really, it could not be simpler. We have spies in Andratan who tell us the Undying Man is severely incapacitated as a result of his invasion of Faltha. Foolishly, he spent almost all of his
Maghdi Dasht
, and has not replaced them with magicians of the same calibre. In this room are five men who will outmatch them in every conceivable way.’

Magicians?
Neherius, with its strange religious ways, had long rejected magicians.
What magicians?

The five elaborately uniformed Valiant Protectors stepped forward and bowed, then returned to their places, matching smiles on their confident faces.

He could not formulate an answer.

The Emperor leaned forward. ‘There is only one question you wish to ask, but you do not ask it. You are either patient or frightened. I have never seen you exercise patience, so I assume it is the latter. Here is your question. “Why was I spared on that day twenty years ago?” It has defined your existence ever since. And you are about to have an answer.

‘I told you there were others potentially disloyal to our cause. We left you alive, young Noetos, but under watch, to see if you attracted any of these dissidents to your side. You were a lightning rod designed to draw out fellow traitors. And, do you know, it worked. Three men went looking for you, and found a noose instead. Because you lived, three traitors died, and our cause survived. A fair exchange, I believe.

‘What entertained us most was the thought of you hiding in a poverty-stricken backwater, learning to fish, getting those fine hands dirty. And then sailing out amongst the Neherian fleet, thinking you were tweaking our noses, when all along you were simply making it easier for us to keep you under surveillance. The annual reports of our Fossan spy made diverting reading, I can assure you.’

‘Fossan spy?’ Noetos repeated. But he didn’t have to ask. He knew. Oh, Alkuon, he was every kind of fool.

It seemed he was to be told anyway. The depthless extent of his naivety was to be publicly plumbed.

‘Halieutes, of course. Paid off with access to our fishing grounds, and finally eliminated when he became too greedy.’

His uncle leaned over to his wife. ‘Do you know, dear, the look on our nephew’s face has made the whole uncomfortable overland trek worthwhile. I swear I’ll never forget it. Look at him: like a calf seeing the slaughterman’s knife for the first time, and realising the green pastures of his childhood have done nothing but prepare him for this moment.’

He stood and nodded to his court, who responded with applause.

‘And speaking of slaughter,’ he said, resuming his seat, ‘we have after-meal entertainment, I understand. Claudo?’

‘My Emperor,’ the effeminate man said, hurrying to the throne from where he waited beside his prisoners.

‘Since you were the one who advocated Noetos be a lightning rod for our cause, my old friend, you have the honour of asking him the necessary questions. Now, I know everyone here approves of this course of action. However, for some of you, such a direct application of politics will not aid the digestion of your meal. This is understood by the throne. You have our leave to remove yourselves.’

No one moved, though in Noetos’s judgment a number of the women and at least two of the men wished they could.
They do not believe their Emperor’s assurances. And why should they? They’ve just been reminded of a clever subterfuge to flush out the disloyal among them. Why would they not suspect another?

‘We have questions for you,’ Claudo said, approaching Noetos and Duon. Two soldiers accompanied him, each carrying one end of a long stake.

They mean to burn us? Inside this room?

Duon, his back to Noetos, began to shake. Noetos himself was certain he was shaking also.
Anomer! Arathé! Are you there? Please!

Nothing.

The soldiers lifted the stake, then slipped it between the men, forcing them apart and scoring their backs with its rough, knotty surface. It would hold them upright when, as would no doubt happen in the next few moments, they could no longer stand unaided.

‘I feel strange,’ said Duon.

Claudo cracked him across the mouth. ‘We’ll hear from you later, black man.’

A third soldier wheeled a brazier into the room, leaving it next to their torturer. Coals glowed redly, and in their midst sat half a dozen instruments. Claudo donned a glove, leaned over with the air of a scholar choosing a volume to read, and selected a pair of pincers.

To Noetos’s mortification, his bladder let go. A few titters of laughter rippled around the room from those close enough to see.

‘Now, we want to know from you how you learned the schedule of the Neherian fleet. How did you know in time to organise resistance at Makyra Bay?’

Noetos lifted his head wearily. ‘I know how this goes. What answer do you want me to give?’ he said.

‘Those with no imagination do not fear pain. At least,’ Claudo said, with a glance at Noetos’s damp breeches, ‘not enough. The son of Demios has never had much imagination. At least, that is what our spy told us. Therefore we must stimulate it for him.’

As the man lifted the pincer to Noetos’s tunic, fastened on the material and ripped it away, the fisherman’s thoughts turned, oddly, to the sound and smell of the sea, as though there was comfort to be found there. Strange that, at the end, he should return to a place he never liked.

‘Ready!’

A thousand hands clasped each other. ‘Remember,’ they had been told, ‘you will experience discomfort, if not actual pain. Hold on, endure. The more of you who endure, the greater the number the effects will be spread across, and the less anyone will have to tolerate.’

By no means everyone had believed it, though Anomer and Arathé had used their Voices widely. Those people had moved on, over the brow of the hill, and made camp there. The remaining volunteers braced themselves.

‘These things are of little use to a man,’ Claudo said, playing to his audience. ‘It is almost as though they were invented for the purpose. Can’t think of what else they’re good for.’

To Noetos, the man’s voice was the cawing of a gull; the murmur of conversation from the table the wash of waves upon the reef.

The pincers closed over his left nipple and squeezed.

‘Now.’

And nothing happened. Claudo gritted his teeth and squeezed his gloved hand as hard as he could. Noetos watched in giddy bemusement. He could feel nothing.

Meranios leaned forward.

Claudo grasped the pincers with both hands, intending to apply more pressure. ‘Gah!’ he cried, and jerked his gloveless hand off the handle.

A half-day’s walk north of the Summer Palace, just under a thousand people felt a slight constriction on their own chests. One or two of the more sensitive among them gave an involuntary cry. The gentle pain lasted a few seconds, then ended suddenly.

Noetos’s mind slowed, unable to keep up with events. He was still anticipating pain, but none came.

A few of the men at table were laughing, believing the torturer’s actions to be an elaborate joke. Wine flowed freely, and the comments as to how the traitor’s son ought to be tortured were becoming more explicit.

‘Claudo?’ said the man who sat the throne. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing, Mer—my Emperor. Attempting to frighten the prisoner.’

‘Get on with it, man. Use the knife.’

Hold still, Father,
Arathé sent.

‘A finger, then,’ Claudo said, his face reassembling itself into what he probably thought was a torturer’s leer. He drew a knife from his belt while one of his assistants grasp Noetos’s right hand and held it firmly.

Teeth bared, Claudo drew it powerfully across the fisherman’s first and second fingers.

The sensation was to Noetos like someone pressing a stick against his knuckles. A slight pressure, nothing more.

This time about twenty people put up their hands for assistance, indicating they had been hurt. They bled from slight cuts to their fingers. The rest felt little more than a tingling sensation.

‘You are doing well!’ Anomer told them. ‘Please, hold still. We will defeat the Neherians yet!’

‘Aaah!’ Claudo cried. ‘Raaah!’ All sophistication was abruptly abandoned. He struck with the knife, trying to bury it in the man’s hand. It bounced off the suddenly hard skin. A greater arc this time, with the same result. The third and last time he drove the knife at his victim’s arm. It connected, and the blade shattered into a thousand pieces.

‘Hold!’

All over the hillside people cried out with sudden pain, and blood was visible from where Anomer stood. But no one moved save those rushing with cloth bandages to staunch the wounds.

The comments from the table had become less mocking and more agitated. The Emperor shouted something, but Claudo could not hear it, preoccupied as he was with his own nightmare. He darted at the nearest assistant and drew the man’s sword. Not the done thing, to unsheathe another man’s weapon, but he didn’t care. He took it in both hands—wincing at the burn—and swung at the traitor’s unprotected neck. A mild thud, and nothing more.